Whalefall and What's Making Us Happy

Guy meets whale; complications ensue. That's basically the plot of the new survival thriller Whalefall. It stars Austin Abrams as Jay, who goes diving in search of his deceased father (Josh Brolin) – and is swallowed by a whale. Based on the book by Daniel Kraus, the movie also has a lot to say about fathers and sons, as well as the lessons they have to teach each other. If you’re looking for more with Austin Abrams, check out these episodes: ‘Resident Evil' is a grisly, funny fight to survive https://www.npr.org/2026/09/18/nx-s1-5973148/resident-evil-is-a-grisly-funny-fight-to-survive In 'Weapons', the kids aren't at all right, not in the slightest, nope https://www.npr.org/2025/08/11/nx-s1-5496241/in-weapons-the-kids-arent-at-all-right-not-in-the-slightest-nopeHigh school is hazardous in the stylish 'Do Revenge' https://www.npr.org/2022/09/19/1123805584/high-school-is-hazardous-in-the-stylish-do-revenge Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:35Speaker 02

  In my head, I was thinking like, wow, I didn't know that we were going to be taken outside of the room in which we're in, into another room inside of a whale.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  It's essentially the back rooms of the whale.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Exactly, and I love that.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  The new movie Whalefall has it all. If by "it all," you mean a guy getting swallowed by a whale. Austin Abrams stars as our unlucky swallowe, while Josh Brolin plays his deceased father, whose harsh life lessons might just come in handy after all. I'm Stephen Thompson. Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Rihanna Cruz. There are freelance music and culture journalists. Hey, Rihanna.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Hey, Stephen. I am so happy to be here.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  I'm so happy to have you. So there is not much more to the plot of Whalefall than I've already mentioned. Guy meets whale, complications ensue. But the film, like the Daniel Kraus novel on which it's based, still has a lot to say about fathers and sons, as well as the lessons they have to teach each other. Whalefall also has some tense and claustrophobic action scenes that fill a good chunk of the film's runtime. It's in theaters now. Rihanna, what'd you think?

• 1:50Speaker 02

  In a surprise to nobody, I loved Whalefall. I love when goofy movies take themselves seriously. And that's what I really liked about this, because when you think about the concept, it is goofy, right? Like dude gets swallowed by a whale, hijinks ensue, but the movie is delivered with such tact, I think. And if the technical elements alone were not as great as they are, I think the sound design is amazing, production design, special effects, they're all firing on all cylinders, right? This movie would not work if those things were not up to par.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  But because the technical elements are so great, I think the movie is successful. I think it's a great confinement horror. I think it's a great animal thriller. If you get claustrophobic, if you have daddy issues, if you're an Austin Abrams fan, like there is something for everyone.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  You know, all three of those apply to me.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, you know, this movie's for you, Stephen. There's something for everyone.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. I think that it is technically an extremely well-made film. All the squelching, all the tentacles you could possibly want, because of course, Austin Abrams is not the only entity swallowed in this particular incident. So there is a certain kind of fending off that has to take place and lots of being grabbed and pulled and tossed and--

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Inside the stomach of a whale. That's so wild.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. It does that stuff really, really effectively. And I think Austin Abrams, who's really having a moment right now in movies, he was very memorably in Weapons last year. He is even more memorably the lead in the new Resident Evil movie. He has spent a lot of time playing a guy to whom a lot happens.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  And I think this is a really nice kind of leading man turn for him. I think he's a really effective everyman who is, you know, thrust into this extremely unlikely situation, for which he and very few other people are actually relatively well-prepared, whereas I would just, you know, be eaten. He has, you know, he has some skills at his disposal. I did want to talk though, Rihanna, about the script for this film. I have not read the Daniel Kraus book on which it's based. It is very highly regarded. And I felt, watching this movie, like, I feel like this scene would be more effective in a book.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  There is a literal and figurative interiority to this story, where it's a guy who's alone with his thoughts inside a whale, and he has to do a certain amount of kind of muttering and sputtering and thinking out loud in order for you to kind of follow his story. And I think as the movie is trying to incorporate more of like, life lessons that he received from his father, with whom he had a very difficult relationship, it winds up having to do a fair bit of underlining in ways that felt a little clunky in spots. Did you have that experience?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  I could see that. Honestly, I think it worked for me. Granted, I didn't read the book as well, but I think with confinement movies like this one, things can get old pretty quickly if you don't have an interesting narrative device to take us out of the confinement. And so the fact that this movie is littered with flashbacks, it worked for me, I think. Without getting too deep into it, the things in the flashbacks made the third act of the movie pay off for me, and I enjoyed that. It's interesting you bring up Austin Abrams, because I think he, for me, is not my favorite actor.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  He does a very similar thing in Resident Evil, I think, where it's just him for a lot of the movie, and he's walking around and he's muttering, and that did not work for me. In this one, I really bought in to the danger, I think because this movie has a good balance of emotion and terror. Terror is an emotion, but you get what I mean.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Like authenticity as well as terror. And his performance here paid off for me, and I think in part due to that interiority and how he's conveying it.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and when I say like, it has to underline some of its points late, I mean, some of the kind of emo nature of it did work on me. I think anybody who has had, you know, a difficult familial relationship, or finds themselves hearing the voice of a dead parent in their head, is going to feel seen by this film. And I did think that, on balance, I found that it really worked. But tonally, there is a little bit of a shift that does happen in that third act, right? Where it gets a little more feelings-y, as opposed to the kind of moment-by-moment terror of being kind of passed into digestive tracts, for lack of a better word.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, the third act for me, the best analog that I could compare it to as I was watching was like, this is like Avatar: Way of Water.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Daddy issues.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  There's daddy issues and communing with whales does happen in both movies.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so I was fully sold. They get really spiritual with it. There's a beautiful scene with the whale, and they're using, I think, echolocation, and they're visualizing it. Like, that is gorgeous to me. And it reminded me a lot of Way of Water and how that movie carries such emotional heft, while also being so beautiful and entertaining. I can't believe I'm saying this about Whalefall, a movie where, yeah, like Austin Abrams is moved through a whale, but I really liked that balance, and it worked for me.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  It just occurred to me now, Rihanna, that you are our communing with whales correspondent.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  I'm so glad.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  I always forget that you're an Avatar stan.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Literally. Well, it came up, because I looked at the credits, I saw wetter workshop. I said, oh, that's what they used on Avatar.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do learn a lot about whales.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  It's true. I was watching, and I have to emphasize that the stomach of the whale is portrayed in such terrifying nature. The walls contort, they squelch, they move in and out. A lot of it looked like practical to me.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yes, to me too.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  It reminded me a lot of that scene in Nope, where all the characters get swallowed up by Jean Jacket. That's what I was thinking of while I was watching. And it was scary to me. While I was watching, I was like, wow, this really should be what the inside of a whale looks like. Like, I felt moved, and I was watching, and I said, wow, we're really in the inside of a whale, which I think is good. It didn't take me out of it.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think you're right, and I think it's worth kind of dwelling on that point for a while, because as you say, this is, what did you say, containment horror?

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Confinement horror, my favorite genre.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Confinement horror, right? And one of the challenges of setting a movie where so much of it takes place in a very tight area is how do you create motion within that? How do you not have a movie, for example, if it's like a buried-alive movie? Like, how do you create motion on the screen that is not just the person wriggling around? And the way that the interior of this whale kind of moves and moves against him keeps this film constantly in motion in ways where I did, like you, I stayed in it.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  And I've watched confinement, I've watched a lot of confinement horrors. I've watched a lot of bad confinement horrors. A good one sticks out to me. But part of what I loved about Whalefall is that you never know where it's going to go inside of the whale. There's a scene where he moves from, I believe, this halfway point between the pharynx and the stomach, and then eventually gets to the stomach, and it's so gross.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  And in my head, I was thinking like, wow, I didn't know that we were going to be taken outside of the room in which we're in, into another room, inside of a whale.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  It's essentially the back rooms of the whale.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Exactly. And I, I love that. I love when there's multiple spaces in a confinement horror, but each space is terrifying.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think this is an effective movie.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I have my quibbles with the script. I do think there are moments late in the film where they're kind of doing a fair bit of underlining in a way that took me out of the movie a little bit.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  But on balance, I did think it was a hoot. I think seeing this film in a crowd would be a lot of fun. I think there's a lot to react to in real time. I got a kick out of it. I, I recommend it.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  I recommend it as well. This is a movie theater movie, I think.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Because you really have to sit in the sound design. The sound design was one of my favorite parts. There's a moment in the back half of the movie when, you know, all is lost for our main character.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  And there's a sound design moment that I didn't think they would actually do, and then they did it. And when they did.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  I kind of put my hands up. I was like, this is cinema.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I had a couple of moments where I was really like, go. And I think the sound, the sound design in this film and the practical effects.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Are really striking, really effective. And I don't think this movie works if you're not hanging on everything Austin Abrams is doing. I don't think this movie works if Josh Brolin isn't kind of effectively playing this kind of tragic father figure.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  The gravitas that he is able to bring as a seasoned actor really works here. I gotta say, Rihanna, I, I did. I dug it. I dug it.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Likewise. I'm so happy we're on the same page, Stephen. I was worried.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  I mean, did I occasionally chortle at it? Yes. But.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  But I dug it.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Chortling is necessary when it's a movie about getting swallowed by a whale.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Well, and chortling is a part of being entertained.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  All right. Up next, we are going to do a special Monday edition of What's Making Us Happy. So come right back.

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• 14:20Speaker 01

  Now it is time for our special Monday edition of What's Making Us Happy. Rihanna Cruz, what's making you happy, buddy?

• 14:26Speaker 02

  So what's making me happy this week is a book about Beck. It is an unauthorized biography of Beck called The Last Temptation of Beck.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  By Josephine Reisman.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  You know, you might know him from loser fame in the 90s, had a string of really eclectic records. At the turn of the century, his records turned very inward. They became singer-songwriter, you know, dabbling in folk rather than eclectic funk and disco. In that shift lies an interesting tension. And Josephine Reisman, what she does in this book is try to figure out why that happened. And Beck notably grew up in Scientology. He grew up with the Scientology community. And so what this book really does that I love

• 15:18Speaker 02

  is give us kind of the history of Scientology and how it influences children that grow up in those communities. And there's an interesting line that she walks in writing this, and I love her writing style. And I am about 100 pages in, and I'm very immersed in it.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Nice. And that's well timed, because Beck has a new album. It is in that kind of slow, stately, mournful.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Setting that albums like Sea Change and Mutations were in.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. And so, I don't know, I listened to a lot of Beck in high school, so this feels very up my alley. There's a lot of context about his family and his upbringing and things like that. I, it feels special to me. So that is The Last Temptation of Beck, The Untold Story of a Pop Messiah by Josephine Reisman.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Nice. Thank you, Rihanna Cruz. I'm also gonna go for a music recommendation for mine. I get asked all the time, Rihanna, to name my favorite Tiny Desk concert of all time. It is a completely impossible and pointless exercise.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  True.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  That almost always stumps me. But I think I'm gonna start answering the question with two words: Gwyneth Paltrow Raymond.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  If you don't know Gwyneth Paltrow Raymond, I cannot recommend her enough. She is a Welsh guitarist, currently blowing up a little bit because she's been touring as an opener for Geese. As a performer onstage, it's just her and an acoustic guitar. And her music is more metal than heavy metal. I listen to her songs and feel like I could run through a brick wall. Like, remember on The Office how Dwight Schrute would get fired up before a sales pitch by listening to Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue?

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  One of my favorite little Office details. For me, my Kickstart My Heart is Anything by Gwyneth Paltrow Raymond. Just last week, she released her new song. It totally rules. It's called Bird Songs for Atomic Skies.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  So that is Gwyneth Paltrow Raymond. Her new song is the best thing that happened to me all last week.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  It's that new song. That, that's not even an indictment of my week. It's just that good a song. It's called Bird Songs for Atomic Skies. And that is what is making me happy this week. That brings us to the end of our show. Rihanna Cruz, thanks so much for being here.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  I'm so happy to be here, Stephen. Thank you for having me.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Whale fall!

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Whale fall, movie of the year. Print it.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna go that far. It's cool. This episode was produced by Mike Katzif, Kayden Mills, and Hafsa Fathema, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello Cummin provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all tomorrow.

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